United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-08-10

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 10 August, 1999

HEADLINES

• Secretary-General regrets loss of life following downing of Pakistani aircraft by Indian Air Force.
• Ordeal is over for UN personnel held hostage by Sierra Leonean rebels.
• Secretary-General sets out principles on applicability of international humanitarian law to UN peacekeepers.
• Restructuring of UN's East Timor mission proposed by Secretary- General to carry out tasks following autonomy ballot.
• Problems mount for displaced non-Albanian Kosovars, UN refugee agency warns.
• Forensic team from UN war crimes tribunal uncovers remains of 250 bodies in mass grave in Bosnia.
• No headway reported in Taliban's probe into last year's murder of Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan, UN says.
• UN agencies set to vaccinate 10 million children against polio in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In a statement issued by his spokesman, Mr. Annan said he is increasingly concerned at repeated incidents between India and Pakistan and urged the two countries to resolve their differences by peaceful means.

The Secretary-General called on both parties to exercise maximum restraint and said he looked forward to an early resumption of the bilateral dialogue in the spirit of the Lahore Declaration.

Commenting on the incident in response to a question from the press as he entered the UN Headquarters this morning, Mr. Annan said he hoped that there would not be a new exchange that could lead to an escalation.

"I think we need to re-establish trust so that they can go back to the table and begin to resolve it through discussions, through negotiations, and I would hope talks will resume sooner rather than later," the Secretary- General said.

In a statement issued by his Spokesman following the safe return of all detainees to Freetown, the Secretary-General gratefully acknowledged the crucial role played by the Government of Sierra Leone and other regional leaders in seeking a peaceful resolution to the situation.

The team from the UN Observer Mission for Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) and the ECOMOG observer group of the Economic Community of West African States had been taken hostage last Wednesday, after traveling to the Ocra Hills to gain the release of children abducted by the rebels during Sierra Leone's civil war.

In the statement, the Secretary-General called on "all parties involved to respect the safety and security of UN and other international personnel operating in Sierra Leone and to take measures to ensure that the recent events are not repeated."

The Secretary-General also urged the parties to release without delay all non-combatants, including children and prisoners of war.

"With the resolution of this deplorable episode, all Sierra Leoneans and the international community should now look ahead and devote all energies to the implementation of the Lome Peace Agreement," the statement said.

The principles, promulgated in a Bulletin issued on Tuesday, cover such matters as the protection of civilians, the means and methods of combat, treatment of detained persons, protection of the wounded, sick and medical and relief personnel.

United Nations Spokesman Fred Eckhard said the Bulletin will take effect on August 12th, exactly 50 years to the day since the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions.

The Secretary-General will be in Geneva on that date to take part in commemorative events being organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), added Mr. Eckhard.

"He wanted to publish this Bulletin in time for the fiftieth anniversary, which, I think, is a fitting demonstration of his personal commitment to the issue," said the Spokesman.

Mr. Eckhard noted that in a letter to ICRC President Cornelius Sommaruga transmitting the new Bulletin, the Secretary-General stressed that the Bulletin "represents the fundamental principles and rules of international humanitarian law and that its promulgation and dissemination in times of peace will diminish the risk of violation in times of war."

At the same time, the Secretary-General pointed out that some of the Bulletin's aspects pertaining to the very nature of peacekeeping operations and the authority of the Secretary-General remained controversial, Mr. Eckhard said.

In his latest report to the Security Council, the Secretary-General says that whatever the outcome of the autonomy vote United Nations efforts must be "redoubled" to build confidence and support stability in the territory and "reassure all groups, in particular those who were in the minority in the ballot, that they have a role to play in the future political life of East Timor."

As part of the restructuring, the Secretary-General recommends increasing the civilian police component of the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) to 410 to enable it to operate in the territory's 13 regencies, or districts. The team would be augmented by another group of about 50 police to recruit and train a new East Timorese police force.

Mr. Annan also suggests strengthening the military liaison force to 300 to advise the Indonesian armed forces on security matters, including efforts to disarm pro-independence factions and pro-integration militias.

Other recommendations include maintaining a reduced number of UN Volunteers to oversee the election of an East Timorese Regional Council and a civil affairs component to observe political developments and promote respect for law and order and human rights. Some additional humanitarian staff will also be needed to coordinate the provision of humanitarian assistance.

The Secretary-General asks the Council to authorize these recommendations for three months following the popular consultation scheduled for 30 August.

Meanwhile in Dili, a UNAMET spokesman announced that a new round of talks on the post-ballot period (phase II) will be held in Jakarta on Thursday and Friday between Indonesian, Portuguese and UNAMET senior officials. Ambassador Jamsheed Marker, the Personal Representative of the Secretary- General, and his deputy, Francesc Vendrell, will attend the meeting, as will Joachim Hutter, the Director of the Asia Division in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at UN Headquarters.

UNHCR spokesperson Judith Kumin told a news conference in Geneva that returns of Kosovars from more than a dozen European host countries were continuing at a rate of about 1,000 a day.

At the same time, an estimated 179,000 people have moved from Kosovo into other parts of Serbia as well as into Montenegro, and the situation of the displaced persons is becoming "increasingly difficult," Ms. Kumin said.

The overall number includes 176,000 Serbs and Roma as well as 3,000 Croatian and Bosnian Serbs who were relocated to Kosovo after fleeing conflicts in their home countries, according to UNHCR. Most of the displaced -- around 130,000 -- have arrived since the end of the NATO airstrikes and the deployment of the KFOR security force in the province.

While most of the newly displaced are staying with host families, many are living in very difficult conditions in tents and collection centers. In southern Serbia, for instance, where there are 3,000 displaced Serbs and Roma from Kosovo, more than 1,000 are taking shelter in tents.

Ms. Kumin said that Dennis McNamara, who heads the humanitarian component of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), would look into the problem of the displaced during his visit to Belgrade later this week.

The team from the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia completed an exhumation over the weekend of the mass grave site where a large number of persons were executed following the fall of Srebrenica in 1995, said the spokesperson, Kelly Moore.

Although the grave was disturbed, the forensic team found the remains of the bodies -- some with their hands tied behind their backs - - along with clothing and personal effects.

The spokesperson said the remains would be taken to the Tribunal's morgue, where they would be photographed, catalogued and analyzed for evidentiary value. It was significant, Ms. Moore added, that after four years, the process of reconstructing the sequence of events surrounding the fall of Srebrenica was finally coming to an end.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York that the Secretary-General had received a letter from Dr. Kamal Kharrazi on the occasion of the first anniversary of the incident.

Mr. Eckhard said that the Secretary-General's Special Envoy and the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA) had repeatedly reminded the Taliban of the resolutions and declarations adopted by the General Assembly, the Security Council and the "six-plus-two" informal group calling on the Taliban to carry out a serious and speedy investigation into that very grave incident. The issue was again raised by the Special Envoy when he visited Kabul last month.

"It should be recalled that during the same period thousands of Afghans, most of them civilians, were killed in Northern Afghanistan, including thousands of Taliban fighters in Mazar-e-Sharif in May 1997," Mr. Eckhard said.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has commissioned an independent investigation of these mass killings of 1997 and 1998 and the report will be submitted to the High Commissioner in the near future, said the Spokesman.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency reported on Tuesday that civilians were still moving into Afghanistan's capital of Kabul after the latest round of fighting between Taliban and Northern Alliance forces displaced more than 100,000 from their homes.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the people who were trucked to Kabul and Jalalabad last week by the Taliban are now nearly all in Kabul and most seem to have dispersed to the northwestern part of the city. Aid agencies are trying to meet the most urgent health care, water and sanitation needs.

UNHCR said there does not seem to have been any significant change in the military situation north and northeast of the capital since late last week, when the Northern Alliance forces retook territory from the Taliban.

Accounts from the northern provinces indicate that the Northern Alliance has also retaken areas in Kunduz province, where fighting has reportedly displaced around 10,000 persons from 22 outlying villages to Kunduz city. Conditions there are described as very poor, UNHCR said.

The country's warring parties have agreed to stop fighting so the first of three vaccination required to ensure effective immunization can begin this weekend, said the spokesman.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had appealed for "Days of Tranquility" to allow immunization to go ahead, has received assurances from President Laurent Kabila and rebel leaders controlling the eastern part of the country that they would lay down their weapons. Even with localized fighting, relief agencies believe the campaign can reach over 95 per cent of children under five years of age.

In his call for the parties to comply with the truce to allow the polio vaccination campaign to take place, the Secretary-General said the vaccination campaigns were "a platform for the peace-building process. They open windows of opportunity for dialogue between the different sides."

The campaign to eradicate polio from the world by the end of the year 2000 is being spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the single highest priority in the global polio eradication effort.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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